IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record wildfires burn a million acres in the Pacific Northwest; It's official: June 2014 was the hottest June globally on record; EPA moves to block massive Pebble Mine; California moves to block oil industry polluting groundwater; PLUS: Wanna cut your emissions? Then cut the beef... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Over the weekend state Assembly Member John Pérez called off his request for a statewide "recount" in the state Controllers primary race, despite the results from the June primary remaining the closest in a statewide race in California history. The vast majority of ballots never received a review by human eyeballs. [See NOTE at bottom of article to explain our use of quotes around the word "recount".]

A partial hand-count of paper ballots in two different counties --- and calls from fellow Democrats to give up the attempt to assure Election Integrity --- was largely all that would occur before the Pérez campaign decided throw in the towel and toss their support behind fellow Democrat Betty Yee for this November's general election.

"While I strongly believe that completing this process would result in me advancing to the general election," Pérez said in a statement posted to his campaign website, "it is clear that there are significant deficiencies in the process itself which make continuing the recount problematic."

Yee had reportedly defeated Pérez by just 481 votes out of well over 4 million ballots cast --- a margin of approximately 1/100th of one percent --- during the statewide primary on June 3rd, securing second place behind comfortable first-place finisher, Republican Ashley Swearengin, and a coveted spot on the November ballot. California now has a "Top-Two" primary system, where the two highest vote-getters of any party go on to face each other in the general election.

There is no automatic, state-sponsored "recount" for statewide races in CA, no matter how close they are found to be after tabulation by the state's hodge-podge of oft-failed, easily-manipulated computer tabulators in each county. If such a post-election count is desired, a candidate or any voter, may request one and pay for it themselves --- though they are refunded the fees if the results end up changing.

The battle for second place in the primary race, and the right to appear on this November's ballot to become the state's next chief financial officer, resulted in what the Sec. of State's office had described as "uncharted territory".

It left counties scrambling, politicians scratching their heads, media trying to figure out how "recounts" even work in this state, while also revealing a number of tremendous flaws in the state's "recount" statutes, some of which we've attempted to warn about at The BRAD BLOG over recent years...with few in Sacramento bothering to take notice.

They seem to be noticing some of those flaws now, however, even as Perez abruptly ended the count over the weekend, after finding just a handful of votes changing in his favor during expensive, partial hand-counts in two counties.

While the situation revealed serious shortcomings in the state's "recount" statutes, it has also revealed that, at least unless the laws are changed, it may be a great time to steal an election in the Golden State, with very little likelihood of detection...

The measure not only calls upon Congress to "propose an amendment...to the United States Constitution" to overturn the infamous Citizens United decision and its progeny, but "to make clear that the rights protected by the United States Constitution are the rights of natural persons only."

A constitutional amendment that eliminated "corporate personhood" would not only invalidate Citizens United but would overturn the newly minted right to "corporate religious liberty" established in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc. (2014).

Unfortunately, the language Lieu included in the measure stops short of "money is not speech." Instead, the measure simply provides for "full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may express their views to one another."

While the ballot proposition is not binding, and has produced critics who describe the measure as little more than a political stunt, if adopted by an overwhelming majority of California voters this fall, it could very well help to ignite a nationwide groundswell of opposition to a series of decisions by an oligarchic Supreme Court that have threatened the very survival of our constitutional representative democracy...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Australia's Rightwing government repeals successful landmark carbon tax; Obama moves forward on bracing for global warming impacts; Record wildfire season burning from California to Alaska; PLUS: California gets tough on water wasters ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

In other words, there was a lot packed in to this week's 58 minutes, including a lot of bullshit to dispel, a bunch of great callers, and even one who totally disagreed with me on e-cigs and children. That was fun.

P.S. During the show, a caller questioned the facts of a quote I read on air from a press release issued today by the Freedom to Marry organization, citing the first Mississippi mayor to call for marriage equality in the state. The quote in question was from the group's President Evan Wolfson, who said in the statement: "More same-sex couples are raising children in Mississippi than in any other state."

The caller, appropriately, challenged the veracity of the statement, and I promised I'd look into the details, since I had just received the release prior to air time and didn't have the details handy. Now I do. Here's where that claim comes from...

Just in, via HuffPo, a federal judge in California has ruled that the state's death penalty system violates the U.S. Constitution's restriction against "cruel and unusual punishments"...

U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down an order Wednesday, finding that the system is arbitrary and in violation of the Constitution's 8th Amendment.

"California's death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against only a trivial few of those sentenced to death," Carney writes. "For all practical purposes then, a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death --- a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose."

Carney continues: "Inordinate and unpredictable delay... has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in a system that serves no penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional."

The story goes on to note that the judge also vacated petitioner Ernest Dwayne Jones' death sentence --- he had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in 1995, and that "an analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that the state spent $308 million on each execution." That analysis underscores what critics of the death penalty have long pointed out, that the cost of killing prisoners far outpaces the cost to the state of keeping them imprisoned for life.

Missouri's Democratic Governor Jay Nixon had an opportunity to encourage people to quit smoking. He didn't take it. In fact, he actually made the choice to help encourage people to continue smoking, despite the fact the deadly habit kills nearly half a million people in the U.S. alone each year.

On Monday, the Governor vetoed Senate Bill 841. While the legislation would have restricted the sale of nicotine vaping products such as e-cigarettes to minors, and required sellers to receive a license from the state, it also exempted the non-lethal devices and products --- which are quickly becoming very popular as a method to quit smoking --- from existing laws and taxes levied against harmful tobacco products.

"This bill appears to be nothing more than a thinly disguised and cynical attempt to exempt e-cigarettes from taxes and regulations protecting public health," Nixon said in his veto message.

This sort of dangerous short-sightedness, unfortunately, is not unusual for Democrats, of late. It also flies in the face of both science and common sense...

See my thoughts on that, the Dems who were helping to pass the terrible Republican bill, some other recent voting news (both good and bad) for California, and a few other related thoughts (like who I really blame for all the Supreme Court disasters of late) in my interview with Joan...

In related news, I hope you'll take a moment this week to read Charles Lewis' article at Politico, "Why I Left 60 Minutes", for yet another helpful reminder of the radical importance of truly independent media, and why I so much need your help to survive here to continue all that we do.

My great thanks to those who have already donated of late! But if you haven't, please consider doing so. A one time donation is great. A monthly sustaining contribution is even better, as it may help, if we can get enough of them, to bring at least some stability to what we're able to do here as we head into another general election season, and as our eleventh year fighting as many good fights as we can, continues...

The case against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), charging that he ran a "criminal scheme" by coordinating his 2012 recall election campaign with about a dozen "outside" groups, is about much more than just Walker and his corruption.

On this week's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, I spoke with Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy about what could be the very last piece of campaign finance law to fall in the wake of 2010's Citizens United and 2014's McCutcheon rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Depending on how the challenge against the case against Walker goes, there may be nothing left that keeps candidate campaigns from putting unlimited, undisclosed millions to work in buying our elections. In short, as I discussed with Fischer, democracy could well become even more hosed than it already is in this country. Who knew that was even possible, at this point?

A controversial California election reform bill that had been sailing through the state legislature with the inexplicable support of Democrats after being authored by a Republican lawmaker, has now been substantially rewritten --- some might say 'gutted'.

And that's a very good thing, according to Election Integrity experts we've spoken with.

Earlier this month, The BRAD BLOG wrote exclusively about AB 2369, a state bill which would have limited post-election voter-requested "recounts" in California to all but the very wealthy, given that it would have changed the state Election Code allowing any voter to request and pay for such a count, to require that the funding for the effort come "from the voter's own personal funds".

[NOTE: The BRAD BLOG generally uses quotes around the word "recount" to denote post-election hand-counts of ballots which have never actually been counted by human beings, but rather, only tabulated by computers. It's impossible to know whether those computers actually tallied votes accurately unless paper ballots are examined by hand.]

The new provision would have been a very big change to current law and, as we reported, would restrict voters from raising funds to help pay for such a count. In the process, it would have drastically reduced the opportunity for citizen oversight of public elections in the state.

Democrats in the state Assembly supported AB 2369, as authored by Republican Assemblyman Curt Hagman for unknown reasons. It passed out of the lower chamber late last month by an astounding 66 to 7 vote, before being sent on to the state Senate.

Here's a bit of good news for California voters for a change: an effort to place a measure on the November 2014 ballot that would have implemented polling place Photo ID restrictions on voting in the Golden State has failed to gather enough signatures to qualify.

Despite those recent blows and others to GOP efforts to implement such policies, the aborted effort in California, headed up by a shadowy organization calling itself GuardMyVote.org, would deny the right to vote to otherwise legal voters who failed to present very specific types of Photo ID at the polls, or a photocopy of same for absentee voters. The legislative language of the detailed 7-page initiative [PDF] would have required voters to present a Photo ID with an expiration date that, among other requirements, "was issued by the United States or the State of California (excluding public colleges and universities)."

Why state-issued Photo ID from public colleges and universities would not have been acceptable is not stated in the proposed measure, but similar GOP-enacted Photo ID restrictions in other states have been found by courts and academic studies alike to disproportionately discriminate against those who tend to vote Democratic, including minorities, the elderly, the poor and student voters.

Had the initiative made it onto the ballot and then been adopted by California voters, it would have taken effect on January 1, 2016, just in time for that year's Presidential election cycle. The failed effort may also prove to be a dodged bullet for Pete Peterson, the state's 2014 Republican nominee for Secretary of State who would have also been on the same ballot. Peterson managed to dodge some of The BRAD BLOG's specific questions about his position on such initiatives in "blue" California.

In a short search, the only names The BRAD BLOG has been able to find involved in the failed CA Photo ID measure appear to be two Rightwingers, though it's unlikely that either crafted the detailed legislative language of the proposal. The woman who submitted the initiative to the state identifies herself as a "conservative" talk radio host who broadcasts out of Palm Springs, even though, as the summary of the initiative [PDF] created by the state Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance found, the fiscal impact of the initiative was anything but conservative. The initiative, if adopted, would have included increased costs to state and local governments "potentially in the range of tens of millions of dollars per year" and required a potential increase in state funding of elections to the tune of "about $100 million," according to the legislative analysis.

The slick GuardMyVote.org webpage describes the group as a "pending" non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)4 social welfare organization. According to the site's "About Us" page: "Guard My Vote is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to protecting the integrity of the vote and the voter rights of all eligible California citizens, native born or naturalized."

The site accepts contributions but offers no information on exactly who they are, or who has funded either the initiative or the website. For all of their claims about "integrity," the site fails to list a single name or organization backing the initiative, so we had to do a bit of digging...

P.S. We've been asking of late, but few have answered the call. Please consider supporting The BRAD BLOG with a one-time donation or a monthly sustaining donation. Everything that we do here --- including our survival and our independence and much of the exclusive reporting offered for free above --- depends on your support to help us continue. It's getting very difficult to do so. So please consider helping us out if you can afford it. Every bit really helps!

Up until now, the state of California has been able to boast about one of the most liberal election "recount" statutes in the nation. It allows any voter or group of voters to request a post-election hand-count of any number of precincts in any race or ballot initiative in the state. The state election code allows crucial access to citizen oversight of public elections.

That may all be about to change, however, if a Republican proposal, currently being supported by Democrats in the state legislature and causing alarm among some who have carried out recent "recounts", becomes law.

[NOTE: The BRAD BLOG generally uses quotes around the word "recount" to denote post-election hand-counts of ballots which have never actually been counted by human beings, but rather, only tabulated by computers. It's impossible to know whether those computers actually tallied votes accurately unless paper ballots are examined by hand.]

Under current law, voters seeking such a post-election count have to pay for the cost, though if the outcome of the election is changed in favor of the requester, they are entitled to receive a refund. Over the years, The BRAD BLOG has also documented abuse by County Registrars who have arbitrarily priced such counts so high that they became cost-prohibitive, effectively blocking such citizen oversight from happening at all.

Still, the provision for post-election citizen oversight of election results in the state, until now, has been far better than most such laws elsewhere in the nation.

But now, a bill proposed by a Republican and broadly supported by Democrats in the state Assembly has moved on to the state Senate for approval. If it passes there and is signed by the Governor, it is almost certain to put a chill on post-election citizen oversight...for all but the wealthiest of voters...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Republicans attack Obama EPA's proposed CO2 emissions standards... but they were FOR emissions cuts before they were against them; Good news for endangered wolves; PLUS: Los Angeles oil spill exposes gaping hole in pipeline oversight ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

First up, a bit of a rant on a few different things, including the good news/bad news results of California's primary election for Secretary of State and the disenfranchised voters this week in Alabama's primary (and beyond!)

Next, Desi Doyen joined us for an extended Green News Report to discuss the Obama EPA's landmark announcement of newly proposed nationwide CO2 emissions reduction and the fossil fueled freakout that followed.

Finally, listener phone calls on all of the above and more! Please enjoy it!...